Gretchen Carlson Is the New Chairwoman of the Miss America Organization

Late last month the CEO and several board members of the Miss America Organization were forced to resign after emails surfaced in which they had cruelly criticized pageant contestants' looks, intelligence, and sex lives. Now, for the first time in the pageant's nearly 100-year history, a former Miss America will take the helm. According to the Associated Press, Gretchen Carlson, former Fox News anchor and Miss America 1989, has been named chairwoman of the organization's board of directors, which will also include 2012 winner Laura Kaeppeler-Fleiss, 2000 winner Heather French Henry, and 1998 winner Kate Shindle.

"Everyone has been stunned by the events of the last several days, and this has not been easy for anyone who loves this program," Carlson said in a statement issued by the Miss America Organization to the AP. "In the end, we all want a strong, relevant Miss America, and we appreciate the existing board taking the steps necessary to quickly begin stabilizing the organization for the future." Carlson added that she and her fellow new board members would continue the "inclusive and transparent process" of appointing new leaders to the organization, and would work with the organization's sponsors to create "a viable, forward-looking Miss America Organization for this and future generations of young women."

In late December HuffPost published a series of emails in which CEO Sam Haskell and other leaders of the organization slut-shamed and body-shamed contestants, called them vulgar names, and, in at least one case, conspired to destroy their livelihoods. Shindle was the target of many of the emails; a few also criticized Carlson for being disloyal to Haskell and the pageant. Within a few days of the emails' surfacing, Haskell, president Josh Randle, chairwoman Lynn Weidner, and another board member had all stepped down from their posts.

Carlson, who accused Fox News CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment in 2016, successfully sued the network, and recently published a book about workplace sexual harassment, criticized the Miss America Organization for not doing enough to clear its name by completely ousting the entire board. "The only solution that will #SaveMissAmerica is resignation of all board members—who expressed 'full confidence' in Haskell after reviewing his appalling emails, [and] have reportedly handed him a severance package," she tweeted a few days after Haskell and the others had resigned.